11 Jul, 2023 23:41

West pushing ‘neocolonial agenda’ on world stage – Lavrov

The Ukraine conflict is just part of a global struggle for multipolarity, the Russian FM has said

The US and its allies are attempting to cling onto world hegemony against the tide of a multipolar international order, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

“We do not define the current phase of international relations as a new Cold War,”Lavrov told the Indonesian outlet Kompas.

“The issue at hand is about something different, namely, the formation of a multipolar international order.This is an objective process. Everyone can see that new globally meaningful decision-making centers are growing stronger in Eurasia, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.”

These countries and their associations are seeing success because they promote “values such as national interests, independence, sovereignty, cultural and civilizational identity and international cooperation,” in line with the global development trends, Lavrov explained.

Meanwhile, the US-led “collective West” is trying to slow or reverse this process, the Russian diplomat said.

Their goal is not to strengthen global security or engage in joint development, but to maintain their hegemony in international affairs and to keep pursuing their neo-colonial agenda, or in simpler terms, to continue to address their own problems at the expense of others, as they are accustomed to doing.

Lavrov pointed to economic sanctions imposed by Western countries against Russia in response to its military operation in Ukraine, as well as “overall selfish foreign policy,” which he said had undermined global food and energy security and made life difficult for developing countries.

The Ukraine conflict will continue “until the West gives up its plans to preserve its domination and overcome its obsessive desire to inflict on Russia a strategic defeat at the hands of its Kiev puppets,” Lavrov added, noting that there are no signs of that happening at this time.

Instead, he said, “the Americans and their vassals continue feverishly pumping Ukraine full of arms and pushing [President] Vladimir Zelensky to continue hostilities.”

The US and its allies spent over $100 billion in 2022 alone to provide Ukraine with weapons, equipment, ammunition and financial support, while insisting they were not a party to the conflict with Russia. Moscow, meanwhile, has argued that the vast military aid only prolongs the conflict and leads to more escalation.

https://www.rt.com/russia/579571-lavrov-west-neocolonial-indonesia/

PN>>19167589>

Hageman: Does the FBI intend to continue to have such meetings [with social media companies] leading up to the 2024 election, to police election-related speech?

Director Wray: Well, we're not going to be policing election-related speech.

Hageman: That's what you previously did.

Director Wray: That's not; I do not agree with that description.

Hageman: This committee has learned that the FBI acted to, "discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden, before and after it was published." That, "Twitter's contact with the FBI was contact and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary," and that, "a surprisingly high number of requests from the FBI for Twitter to take action non-election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts." Are you aware that that has been reported?

Directpr Wray: I am aware of some of what the committee has found in it's report, but I will add that I'm not sure I agree with the findings in the report.

Hageman: Bit that's what we found.

Instead of saying no, he specifically not to “we will not be policing related speech”,that seems to means they will continue to police other forms of speech. He didn’t rule any other forms of free speech which was specifically pointed out the judge, the government agencies are to have no contact with social media to interfere with any free speech!

This is insane he never read the ruling, he was only briefed on it. This was on war room with Mike Davis this am, he didn’t bother to read the ruling. Being briefed on it means that those briefing him, may not be telling him the extensive and detailed nature of the ruling. Is he intentionally not reading it so he can say, I’m not aware of that? Or he aware his underlings are lying to him?

Beth Majeroni Dragged Out Of Chatham County, Georgia, Board Of Elections Meeting On Dominion Machines Issues

12:53 minutes

Watch this and read the article onRaffensberger hideous attempt to deny Halderman’s reporton voting machines that I will post next!

https://rumble.com/embed/v2wwcqw/?pub=4

>>19168656

Security assessment of Georgia voting machines signals scrutiny heading into 2024

June 23, 2023 04:26 PM

Georgia's voting system is once again under scrutiny, this time by election cybersecurity experts, which could set the state up for a repeat situation of 2020 election fraud claims.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was at the center of the 2020 Georgia election scandal, dismissed claims made by security expert Alex Halderman in a letter to the Georgia General Assembly on Tuesday.

In an audit, Halderman determined that there are dangerous vulnerabilities in the voting machine software used widely throughout the state. However, Raffensperger argues that Halderman's findings are overblown and no fixes are required.

"Georgia’s election system is secure. It’s been battle-tested through two general elections, subjected to repeated audits and intense public scrutiny, and come through with flying colors," Raffensperger said.

"Every single piece of voting equipment across Georgia will undergo security health checks ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, including verification no software has been tampered with."

Raffensperger said the audit of the state's Dominion Voting Systems' ImageCastX ballot-marking services came from a three-month survey in a "laboratory environment."

He said Halderman's identified risks were "theoretical and imaginary."

“It’s more likely that I could win the lottery without buying a ticket” than that fraudsters flip enough votes to swing the election, he said in the letter.

Now the secretary of state's comments are the subject of controversy, as cybersecurity specialists say he is lumping legitimate research with conspiracy theorists, which could be damaging for the 2024 election cycle.

"Raffensperger has lumped us with the election deniers,” David Jefferson, a computer scientist atLawrence Livermore National Laboratory and an expert on election technology, said to Politico.

“But we cannot, out of fear of that confusion, stop talking about these vulnerabilities. They are real, they are there, and they must be addressed.”

Raffensperger compared Halderman's report to "critics of Georgia's election security," such as "election-denying conspiracy theorists" and litigants in Curling vs Raffensperger. The lawsuit stemmed from the 2020 election after voters claimed the voting systems were dysfunctional and impeded voters' ability to cast a ballot.

They have argued for hand-marked paper ballots, as the machine-printed ballots are counted using barcodes that voters cannot corroborate with their own eyes. Georgia has maintained that the voting system has adequate controls to prevent any fraud.

However, the arguments between security experts and state officials set up a potential battle for the legitimacy of the vote in the 2024 presidential election. The state is still reeling from the last presidential election, where Raffensperger had to fight off former President Donald Trump and his high-profile allies.

Several cybersecurity analysts and election security experts argue that there’s enough time to make changes and that fixing a documented issue with the machines is the best way to prevent vote-tampering or disinformation in 2024.

Overall,Halderman’s audit discovered nine vulnerabilities in Dominion’s software, the United State government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, confirmed. The agency first reviewed the report under seal and then warned publicly about the nine flaws in June 2022.

Each of Halderman's predicted attacks would require, to some degree, physical access to the election ballot systems. Fraudsters would also need a copy of the program's software, which would be hard to obtain and even harder to decipher.

One of the biggest concerns raised by Halderman is that by altering both the barcode and the text that lists a voter’s choice, hackers could undermine confidence in efforts to verify election results. Even if voters were able to catch a mistake, it could cause widespread confusion on Election Day, the audit determined.

A Dominion spokesperson said, “Our customers’ certified systems remain secure thanks in part to the many robust operational and procedural safeguards that exist to protect elections." The comment came in response to being asked about Halderman's findings.

Regardless,Halderman said Raffensperger's actions are "the height of irresponsibility."

"Even if there’s no actual attack, you better believe that there are people who are going to use the existence of these problems to call into question the results of elections," Halderman said in an interview with Politico.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/georgia-voting-machines-security-under-scrutiny-2024

Highlights From House Judiciary Hearing With Christopher Wray

Tristan Justice1/2

FBI Director Christopher Wray faced another grilling before lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Here are the highlights:

Zoe Lofgren Declares FBI Politicization A ‘Conspiracy’

California Democrat Congresswoman and former Trump impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren charged Republicans with “engaging in conspiracy theories” to delegitimize the FBI “without any evidence” with claims the agency is opposed to conservatives. Such a statement flies in the face of the recent 155-page court opinion from Missouri v. Biden that outlined a widespread censorship regime, the findingsfrom the Twitter Files, and decades of misconduct in the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

Lofgren can catch up on all the evidence she said doesn’t exist here.

Wray Calls Fed Involvement In J6 Riot ‘Ludicrous,’ Then Refuses Questions

Wray dismissed allegations of undercover FBI involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as “ludicrous” and then refused to answer questions about the scale of the agency’s confirmed involvement.

“The notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous,” Wray told Tennessee Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen.

California Republican Darrell Issa immediately pressed Wray for answers on FBI operations that day wherein undercover informants wherein the Justice Department deployed “national” forces out of the FBI installation at Quantico with “shoot to kill” authority.

“How many individuals were either FBI employees or people that the FBI had made contact with, were in the January 6th entry of the Capitol and surrounding area?” Issa asked.

“I really need to be careful here [when] talking about where we have or have not used confidential human sources,” Wray said.

It was far from the first time the FBI has denied explaining the agency’s use of undercover informants at the Capitol riot.

Massie Presses For Answers On J6 Pipe Bombs

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie stepped up the pressure on Wray to give Congress answers over the agency’s effort to track down the suspected pipe bomber who left devices at both the RNC and DNC on Jan. 6.

In May, Reps. Massie and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded an FBI briefing on the pipe bomb cases after a whistleblower revealed the agency identified the car used by the prime suspect but refused to track the vehicle down. Both bombs were reportedly inoperable, according to the whistleblower.

Wray sought to hide behind longstanding departmental policy not to comment on active investigations.

Massie reminded Wray that it’s been 900 days since the bombs were discovered.

Wray Held Russian-Infiltrated Surveillance Service As ‘Longstanding Partner’ In Censorship

Wray defended the FBI’s relationship with the Russian-infiltrated intelligence agency in Ukraine to censor American speech. The Security Service of Ukraine, Wray said, which has been notoriously compromised by the Kremlin, is a “longstanding good partner” of the FBI.

A new interim report from the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government out Monday revealed the FBI colluded with the Ukrainian agency to flag social media posts to Silicon Valley tech giants for censorship.…

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/12/highlights-from-the-house-judiciary-hearing-with-christopher-wray/

>>19168798

2/2

Wray Admits To Catholic Surveillance

While Democrats spent the hours-long hearing making excuses for decades of agency misconduct, the FBI director admitted to surveillance of Catholic parishes.

In February, former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin revealed that “the FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass.”

House Republicans followed up with a letter to Wray in April “We know the FBI, relying on information derived from at least one undercover employee, sought to use local religious organizations as ‘’new avenues for tripwire and source development.'”

“Do you think priests should be informants inside the church?” Jordan asked Wray at Wednesday’s hearing.

Wray conceded the FBI may have deployed resources to surveil Catholic parishes but maintained the episode in Richmond did not “result in any investigative action.”

Wray Admits FBI Sought Amerians’ Financial Records From Bank Of America

The FBI director said agency cooperation with American financial institutions to surveil U.S. citizens was routine practice.

An FBI whistleblower came forward earlier this year to reveal the FBI obtained a “huge list” of Americans’ financial records with transactions on credit or debit cards logged near the nation’s capitol around the time of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“George Hill, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston field office, told us that the Bank of America, with no legal process, gave to the FBI gun purchase records with no geographical boundaries for anybody that was a Bank of America customer. Is that true?” asked Rep. Massie.

“A number of business community partners all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity, and my understanding is that that’s fully lawful,” Wray said.

Wray Refuses To Condemn Armed Raid Of Pro-Life Activist

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy pressed the FBI director over the agency’s armed raid and arrest of a Christian pro-life activist named Mark Houck last fall.

“I’m not going to second-guess the judgment of the career agents on the ground who made the determination,” Wray said.

“But your job is to second guess and look at what they’re doing,” Roy said.

Houck was ultimately acquitted of all charges in January.

Gaetz Accuses FBI Of Protecting The Bidens

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz accused the FBI of engaging in double standards of justice by protecting the Biden family. According to whistleblowers within the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the FBI concealedcritical records from federal tax investigators, including an unclassified FD-1023 formimplicating the president and Hunter Biden in a multi-million-dollar bribery scheme with foreign actors.

“Are you protecting the Bidens?” Gaetz asked.

“Absolutely not,” Wray said.

Wray Won’t Say Whether DOJ Should Rescind Memo Targeting Concerned Parents

California Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley asked Wray whether the FBI director believed the Justice Department should rescind a memo directing staff to surveil concerned parents who show up at school board meetings.

In March, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee published an interim staff report that concluded the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” for deploying counterterrorism resources on parents.

“It appears, from these documents and the information received previously,” the report read, “that the Administration’s actions were a political offensive meant to quell swelling discord over controversial education curricula and unpopular school board decisions.”

“Should Attorney General Garland rescind that memo?” Kiley asked.

Wray deferred the question to the attorney general.

“I think the FBI conducted itself the way it should here,” Wray said.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/12/highlights-from-the-house-judiciary-hearing-with-christopher-wray/

The Censorship Empire Strikes Back After Missouri v. Biden Free Speech Victory

BY: AARON KHERIATY1/3JULY 12, 2023

The day after the federal court in Missouri v. Biden granted our request for a preliminary injunction against the government’s censorship regime, law professors Leah Litman and Laurence Tribe published an article in Slate slamming the court’s ruling. Framing the case in entirely partisan terms, Litman andTribe’s analysis betrayed an inadequate understanding of the First Amendment free speech guaranteesand established limits on government power.

The next day, the Biden administration requested a stay against the injunction (which was denied by the district court judge) and appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit.

As one of the plaintiffs in this case, I can clearly see errors of fact and legal reasoning in their diatribe against the decision. In the opening paragraph, the authors baldly assert, “The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment.” The incantation“thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory” is meant here to function as a hypnotic device, absolving readers from actually examining the reams of evidence we present in the case.

In another unintelligible rhetorical flourish, they assert in the closing paragraph that the court’s ruling is “trying to make the infamous ‘Twitter Files’ into constitutional law.” Anyone who has read the “Twitter Files” reports will have trouble understanding what that sentence even means. The court did not rely on the “Twitter Files” but rather on information in the case unearthed in preliminary discovery. Between these beguiling bookends, Litman and Tribe ignore the evidence and sidestep the relevant legal questions.

The first error Litman and Tribe claim to uncover in the court’s ruling is the issue of whether the plaintiffs — the states of Missouri and Louisiana and the five private plaintiffs, including this author — have standing to bring the case. But the preliminary injunction ruling did not address the question of standing because the court already ruled on this question in its previous response to the government’s motion to dismiss. Any critique of the court’s standing analysis should examine the actual document where the court addressed that question in detail. However, Litman and Tribe do not engage in that analysis.

Echoing the defense, Litman and Tribe seem to believe that government agencies or officials run afoul of the First Amendment free speech guarantees only when they “jawbone” or “force” social media companies to censor specific content. As they frame it, the government was not really telling these companies what to do, but merely acting as a friendly neighborhood government agency: “Hey, Meta and Twitter, you all might want to have a look at these posts and see if they violate your terms of service. And if they don’t, then hey, you might want to change your terms of service so that they do.”

The government’s just trying to be helpful, don’t you see?

The problem with this framing is that it ignores the obvious imbalance of power between the government and private corporations: The boxer’s fists are lethal weapons even if he does not overtly threaten to use them.

The government has, in fact, jawboned, strongarmed, and coerced social media companies, as I described in “The White House Covid Censorship Machine,” which details one example among many we presented to the court: the frankly abusive relationship between White House official Rob Flaherty and a senior executive at Facebook.

But even excluding the instances of overt and obvious coercion, prior free speech cases have established several other ways the government’s behavior can constitute state action — the crucial legal line that cannot be crossed without violating the First Amendment. Overt coercion is only one of several ways the government’s efforts to restrict speech can run afoul of the Constitution….

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/12/the-censorship-empire-strikes-back-after-missouri-v-biden-free-speech-victory/

>>19168880

2/3

Prior court caseshave established that unconstitutional state action includes not just(1) the state’s exercise of “coercive power,” but also (2) when the state “provide[s] such significant encouragement, either overt or covert” to private conduct; (3) when “private actors” operate as “a willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents”; and (4)when the “formally ‘private'” action “may become so entwined with governmental policies or so impregnated with a governmental character as to become subject to the constitutional limitations placed upon state action.” Furthermore, case precedent has established that specific features of the government’s action may combine to create a compelling case for state action, especially where (5) a federal statute has immunized private conduct.

As we argued in extensive detail in our motion for the preliminary injunction, all these factors are present in the government’s actions: (1) coercion, (2) significant encouragement, (3) joint participation, (4) entwinement, and (5) legal immunity [Section 230 protections] combined with other factors [implicit and explicit threats of removing broad immunity].

Litman and Tribe’s analysis entirely ignores the evidence for the first of these and completely elides the other four forms of state action also clearly present in this case….

Contrary to Litman and Tribe’s framing, the issues, in this case, have nothing to do with liberal versus conservative divisions — the private plaintiffs include Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The relevant distinction is not left versus right but legal versus illegal. The only real question is whether federal officials and federal agencies have, or have not, violated the highest law of the land — namely, the United States Constitution.

Examining the evidence we present from limited discovery, even prior to the case going to trial, the court correctly ruled that we are likely to prevail on the merits of our arguments: The government’s systematically repeated behavior was clearly unlawful.

Shortly after we filed this case, almost a year ago, I wrote, “This evidence suggests we are uncovering the most serious, coordinated, and large-scale violation of First Amendment free speech rights by the federal government’s executive branch in U.S. history. Period, full stop. Even wartime propaganda efforts never reached this level of censorship, nor did the government in days past have the power of today’s social media at its disposal.”

In last week’s injunction ruling, the judge arrived at the same conclusion, writing: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the presentcase arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

This is clearly a strong claim, but, as I have previously argued, an entirely accurate one. Before the digital age, prior censorship cases typically involved the government suppressing one publisher, one article or book, or one source. In this case, we have a government-funded, government-coordinated “misinformation” industry responsible for censoring hundreds of thousands of Americans on social media tens of millions of times. The breadth and scope of what has been dubbed the “censorship-industrial complex” is astonishing, and the government is controlling its activities.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/12/the-censorship-empire-strikes-back-after-missouri-v-biden-free-speech-victory/

>>19168893

3/3

Indeed, in the closing remarks of the ruling, Judge Doughty went even further, alluding to the dystopian regime depicted in Orwell’s 1984:

Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.”

Much of what the government censored turned out to be true — the fact that Covid shots do not stop infection or transmission, the collateral harms caused by lockdowns and school closures, the lack of any randomized trial evidence for masking children, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the Russia-collusion hoax, among other things.

However, government censorship is unconstitutional regardless of whether the information censored turns out, upon critical examination and debate, to be true or false. Government officials cannot arrogate the power to decide for all citizens what is true and what is false — as they are not God, they lack the omniscience to make those judgments. Their desire to assume this role only reveals their arrogant contempt for the intelligence and judgment of ordinary Americans.

Students of history can readily grasp that government censorship is never about the disinterested pursuit of truth — it’s always about accruing and maintaining power, about shielding the regime from criticism and silencing any opposition. After the court issued the injunction, we saw the federal censorship empire immediately strike back. Censorship apologists like Litman and Tribe rushed to the government’s defense, and the government appealed the injunction, claiming “irreparable harm” if their censorship activities are curtailed.

Authoritarian regimes have always justified censorship in terms of protecting people from harm — people who apparently are incapable of discerning what is true and right on their own and without instructions from their rulers. One can ask: Would Tribe be defending the government’s actions had the censorship targeted an issue he cared deeply about, say, affirmative action?

The courts grind slowly, and this case will involve a long road through the federal appellate courts and byzantine procedural issues and arguments. Most observers think Missouri v. Biden will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But however long it takes, we will continue to fight this battle until the government’s censorship empire is dismantled and Americans regain their First Amendment right to free speech in the digital public square.

Anons if you haven’t read this ruling, its probably the most important ruling that has come out in defense of the first amendmentI highly recommend reading it!

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/12/the-censorship-empire-strikes-back-after-missouri-v-biden-free-speech-victory/

>>19168842

He can’t be trusted, he weighs his questions and responses politically,he said so himself. So as much he believes in the constitution he chooses what he defends in the constitution depending on how much push back he will get!

>>19168861

And a very sloppy dresser.